Elies se Armi - Greek Pickled Olives from my Thirroul Seaside Garden - Global Wanderings in My Kitchen

I've been to Greece  a few times and just loved the food, Spanokopita. Tiropitakia, Dolmades, Tzatziki, Taramasalata, Souvlaki, Greek Roasted Leg of Lamb, Cheeses (Feta & Haloumi), Saganaki, Garithes me Feta (Garlic Prawns cooked in Tomato & Feta Sauce), Baklava & of course the Olives.

Now our local Thirroul Bowlo Club eatery has turned Greek, run by the husband of one my old school mates, Efti, one of the few Greeks in Thirroul in those days. We'd celebrated our wedding anniversary at their inaugural Greek Bazouki & Belly Dancing Night. It was a great night with Greek dancing, even more so to find that some of our old workmates, who are members of the Illawarra Greek community, as well as being friends of friends of Efti's husband, had wandered up to Thirroul to help kick it off.

So enthused by Greek foods, about 10 years ago, I'd planted an olive tree in the front garden of our seaside home on the NSW South Coast. We have a southerly exposure to salt laden winds so everything takes ages to grow - if they survive at all. The olive tree grew & grew - competing with the banksia's that attract Sulphur Crested Black Cockatoos.

We didn't get any olives for a long, long time. And even if we had, I recalled the label on the little bush I'd bought said something about a caustic soda pickling method - surely there was something less nasty ? But most stories I'd heard mentioned the caustic soda method - really offputting.

Finally, 3 years ago we had lots of olives - not enough to press our own oil - but enough to bottle the olives themselves. By then I'd read a few more of my Greek cookbooks, and discovered caustic soda wasn't necessary at all.

So I used Elies se Armi, aka Pickled Olives, pp18-19 from the AWW Easy Greek Style Cookery book - similar to Tess Mallos's Greek Cookbook p98,Angeline Kapsaskis's Greek Commonsense Cookbook p16 & Bourke's Backyard Factsheet - ( full instruction details here ).

The tedious part is making the 2 lengthwise cuts to the stone in each olive, gloves are recommended if you don't want your hands dyed a burgundy-purplish shade. I mentioned the olive slitting to an ABL (Australian Born Lebanese) work mate and she muttered about her father's bottling of olives - not something she wanted to do again too often. Another Macedonian workmate confirmed that the brine pickling was definitely the way to do olives & mentioned that it is common to not get a good crop every year.

Altogether, it really is too easy - all you need is olives, water, salt and, at the end, olive oil. Change the water every day for 5-10 days, depending on whose recipe you follow, then leave them in the dark. I leave them for months, rather than opening after 5 weeks as some recipes indicate. Contributions to the Manisa Turkish website tend to agree - some suggesting keeping them in the dark for 6 months before opening.

My husband's bottled olives from last year's crop were checked by our nephew James, the Apprentice Chef, & he was very impressed that we bottled our own. James liked their flavour too. We'd emailed a copy of the technique to cousins down on their farm in Oaklands, near Corowa in southern NSW. Ann had been a high school cooking teacher, but had left to manage the farm finances. She is deadly with removing avocado stones with quick knife stab - but hadn't worked out how to pickle the many olives growing on their trees in the Home Paddock kitchen garden. But she was very keen to try it out.

So we're finding that we get reasonable crop every second year - depending on how many we lose to storms and alas, the sulphur crested black cockatoos & galahs who seemed to have enjoyed this year's crop. 

 

Postscript for @misssafet

Psari Lemonato from Tess Mallos Greek Cookbook - which I believe is out of print - possibly in her Complete Middle East Cookbook - recently reprinted

• 1 whole fish for baking (1kg)
• juice of 2 lemons
• salt& pepper
• 500gm potatoes very thinly sliced
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1/2 cup olive oil

1. Clean fish & slash each side in 2 or 3 places
2. Sprinkle inside & out with some of lemon juice & season with salt & pepper
3. Place in oiled baking dish
4. Arrange sliced potatoes around fish & pour remaining lemon juice over potatoes & fish
5. Season potatoes with salt & pepper - pour olive oil over contents of dish
6. Sprinkle with oregano then cover with foil
7. Cook at 180-190oC for 40 minutes (check after 30 minutes)
8. Remove foil & continue to cook for another 30 minutes or until fish & potatoes are cooked
9. Serve immediately with steamed spinach, green salad and/or Greek salad

Serves 4-5

Pics :

1.Waterfront in Mykonos  2. & 3. : Santorini  4.& 5. Mykonos Restaurant with young Olive Trees on tables 6. & 7. My Olive Tree 8. Pickled Olives from our Tree

 

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A Tess Mallos Slow Food Easter Weekend - Garithes and Pastitio

I love the Easter holiday long weekend in Australia - cool weather kicking in and the chance to do some slow food without the pressures of the usual weekends.

Good Friday had kicked off with my Significant Other doing his speciality Garithes (Prawns) me Feta (& Tomatoes) from Tess Mallos's legendary Greek Cookbook - see Big Oven - Garithes Yiouvetsi blog post - for close approximation - based on Tess Mallos Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook - I am not sure why she gave the recipes different names. I am a great fan of Tess Mallos and have her Cooking  Moroccan book in addition to these Greek & Middle Eastern cookbooks.

In fact Garithes me Feta, aka Garithes Yiouvetsi, is not really a slow food item - but is so very yum. David drew his inspiration from Yorgies where we first enjoyed Garithes. Yorgies was a ( long since departed) restaurant in the village of Coledale in Wollongong's north  - where the hugely popular Chedo's (Mediterranean - Croatian influences) is located (Chedo is the husband of TV reporter Stella Lauri who can be seen doing maitre d'  & waiting at tables after she's driven back from the Sydney TV studios !)

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For our family Easter Sunday Night Dinner I had planned Prosciutto, Basil & Boconncini Bites as starters - to be followed by Tuscan Bean Soup with Crusty Cob Bread from one of our local Thirroul Vietnamese Bakeries.

As mains I settled on Pastitio from Tess Mallos's Greek Cookbook - which is quite similar to the Rick Stein version used by Almost Bourdain in her recent blog post. This is one of my favourite foodie blogs & I like her foodie pics - a blogger's beautiful pics. It's nevertheless probably a little more stylish than the home foodie blogs over at Jamie Oliver's web page - which have an honesty about them. In fact I think that's great when you consider Jamie's Ministry of Food campaign to get folks back to home cooking.

On Sunday nights I usually do Mains & Nan brings along a dessert - this Sunday she also brought along one of our nephews - who was at a loose end with the rest of his family interstate or overseas.

I quickly discovered that the Prosciutto, Basil & Boconncini Bites (from Australian Gourmet Traveller - Feb 2001) were going to be Greek Style with Haloumi when Saffron's, our local Deli in Thirroul, had already run out of baby Bocconcini. Fortunately I had Haloumi in the fridge. These Bites are so easy - take a strip of prosciutto and place a small piece of Baby Boconcini or Haloumi on it - follow with a basil leaf (our's are fresh from our garden) - then a quarter of artichoke heart. Roll up and secure with toothpick. I did about a dozen and let them sit in the fridge until later (Pic 3). They can be grilled - but I was going to bake them (on a baking tray lined with baking paper) along with the Pastitio - checking every 3 to 4 minutes and turning a couple of times. They need to be warmed through - but I don't like them crispy.

Having done the Bites I moved onto the Tuscan Bean Soup - from the Oz Family Circle Magazine - a few years back. Such a shame that one of the older Oz foodie mags, FC,  is no longer available as a monthly mag - but sometimes there are still special winter & Christmas editions.

So I started chopping 2 onions, 1 carrot, 2 celery sticks & 2 zucchini. Heating 2 tablespoons of Olive Oil ( I used less than the 3 specified) and sauteing all the veges, except the zucchini, along with 2 bay leaves from the small bay tree in a pot outside our backdoor, as well as some shakes of dried sage- for about 5 to 10 minutes. Finally throwing in the chopped zucchinis as well as a 400g can of diced Tomatoes along with a drained & rinsed can each of Borlotti Beans & Cannellini Beans (400g each) (Pic 1). Then simmering for about 20-30 minutes. (Pics 2 & 3). Should be served with shaved parmesan.

I then started on the Pastitio from the Tess Mallos legendary Greek Cookbook. I had cheated & done a huge batch of meat sauce a couple of days earlier - reserving some for tonight's Pastitio. Likewise with the macaroni. So it was fairly easy to assemble the pasta & meat sauce layers - although I had to separate the individual pieces of cooked macaroni that always seem to clump together when you store them in the fridge. Pastitio is similar to Lasagne - however the Bechamel Sauce is a lot lighter - as it doesn't have the cheese like in Lasagne. With the Bechamel almost done I discovered that I should have added 1/2 cup to the meat sauce before I had topped it with the second of the pasta layers - oops - too late. So I just poured the Bechamel over the pasta - hoping for the best (Pic 2). 

At this point I decided that we really needed a tossed salad - so sweetly asked David would he mind throwing one together - his are usually better than mine anyway. I handed him a couple of fresh basil leaves from our vegie garden. The salad smelled so good (Pic 4), and included black olives from the tree in our front garden which we had home pickled. 

We gobbled up the Prosciutto Basil & Haloumi Bites & loved the Tuscan Bean Soup - always a favourite - although as usual it really tasted better the next day - note to self - do this a day or two in advance next time.

Then a longish break before the Pastitio was ready (Pic 5) - you have to leave it for 5-10 minutes before cutting & serving - the same as you do with Quiche & Lasagne. I served it at the table with the tossed salad as my tiny kitchen had filled up with the dishwasher already running - and so I was running out of space to plate up. The Red Wine ? Tatler's Archie's Paddock Shiraz (Pic 6) that I had picked up on a recent trip to the Hunter with the nephew's parents - it really complemented the Pastitio. Seconds of Pastitio were served up & the tossed salad demolished.

Another long break.

Nan had brought along Passionfruit Slice - similar to the version in www.Taste.com.au - but without passionfruit in the top layer. Nan had nearly given up on finding her recipe so we nearly had passionfruit iced cupcakes. Anyway the Passionfruit Slice was so yum - I have never seen it disappear so quickly (Pic 7 - half demolished !) Then a phone call from London from another of Nan's grandchildren - a wonderful way to finish the evening.

hmm - and everyone just too full to eat the mini Turkish Delight Easter Eggs I had put aside for later on !

 

Knowledge Capture in the Kitchen Clouds

 

Are you one of those foodies who collects recipes from everywhere ? Magazines ? Family members ? Friends ? Foodie web sites & blogs ?

That's me. I pile them and then periodically file them, plus cull a few.

In particular I've made the effort to collect family favourites for my daughter, Kat, from my Mother (Nan) & my Mother-in-law (Nanna). I gave them each one of those dinky A5 "My Favourite Recipe" folders, which came with preprinted cards to be filled in. Nanna busily typed away on the supplied cards using her trusty older manual typewriter. Luckily so, as Nanna has become very frail, hard of hearing and now lives in another state.  How easy it is to lose family favourites in such circumstances. We also nearly lost Nan before her family favourites were collected - in the end I hand wrote many of them myself, while Nan spent months recovering in hospital from lifesaving cardiovascular surgery.

And my sister-in-law, the Apprentice Chef's Mother, was stunned to find out that I had some of the treasured family favourites "captured" from Nanna, in a little A5 "My Favourite Recipe" folder. So I was able to photocopy & pass them on. I've even put a couple on Facebook to share with the widely scattered family.

Over the years the Apprentice's Chef's Mother & I learned that Nanna's tablespoon equals 2 metric 20ml sized tablespoons & her dessert spoon equals 1 metric 20mil sized tablespoon. So, along the way, we both experienced a few very runny disasters with Nanna's usually superb Mango Cream Tart due to our adding insufficient gelatine. But we followed the recipe - we wailed. That was before we did some knowledge sharing & jointly figured out how to convert Nanna's quantities to standard Australian metric's. Disasters ceased.

With so many foodie web sites and blogs, we are now very blessed with the technology to do knowledge sharing in the kitchen, compared with the old days of laboriously handwriting onto scraps of paper or in exercise books. My daughter, Kat, keeps muttering that my own collection of older handwritten items in their foolscap sized exercise book are at risk of fading away. Dropping hints that the contents need to be transferred to one of our pc's & maybe even online - perhaps on one of those nice foodie Cloud apps - so helpful. OK - I've made a start at Taste.com where you can your create own online recipe book - but I've usually been too busy to make much progress. Like Mother like Daughter perhaps ? 

However there is also the nagging question - you could invest a lot of time setting up online repositories of family favourites & other saved for future culinary experiments - but how can you be sure that they won't disappear without warning - poof ? Especially as Taste.com does seem to have set up a regular recipe deletions initiative - find out more here

Like when my carefully saved SAI Global favourites list, with associated "what's changed" email updates, underwent a massive bi-section. They changed their business model - after 6 years previously with no changes. Another victim of the Global Financial Crisis in fact. Now my list of favourites was too long for their new model - so they arbitrarily chopped it in two for me - before I could choose which sublists should sit where. Much muttering and hours rearranging online.....

Interestingly a recent New Scientist article, provocatively headlined "Digital Doomsday",  questioned the limited longevity of electronic media and basically pointed back to keeping paper records as being more likely to resist the vagaries of ageing. Huh ? Heresy ?  "A century or so after a major catastrophe, little of the digital age will remain beyond what's written on paper.... "Even the worst kind of paper can last more than 100 years," says Season Tse, who works on paper conservation at the Canadian Conservation Institute. The oldest surviving "book" printed on paper dates from AD 868, he says. It was found in a cave in north-west China in 1907."

Hence you keep hard copies as backups - and the kitchen library grows and grows.

 

 

 

Saik Chrouk Ch'ranouitk - Kat's Khmer Kitchen inspired Knowledge Sharing

The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon was my first big cookbook purchase - made while I still at Uni - just. The Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy awarded me with a cheque for topping the class in my second last year of my Metallurgy Degree - but it was not presented until I was writing my thesis in my final year. Too late to spend on textbooks.

So I indulged myself and lashed out on Charmaine Solomon's 500 + page culinary encyclopaedic work. A big step up from the ubiquitous little high school textbook aka the Commonsense Cookbook.

What I loved about the Complete Asian Cookbook, was the way Charmaine Solomon shared her knowledge - not just on how to cook the food - but also how to serve, what utensils to use and where to buy unusual ingredients. But more than that - I loved the stories she shared in introducing each chapter on the different countries & regions covered. It made it all seem more real.

My favourite pages, in the Indian section especially, are easily identified by their stains and splashmarks - with handwritten comments indicating likes or dislikes - successes or DNCA (do not cook again). There was the time I smoked out the whole block of units with chili fumes when experimenting on Szechwan Chicken (p393) without an exhaust range hood.

We'd travelled to Angkor Wat - Siem Reap in Cambodia, so it was inevitable that my then 13 year old daughter, Kat, would choose a Khmer dish for a school Technology & Design assessment task encompassing cooking "something" with noodles. While the Indian-Pakistan & Chinese chapters in the old faithful "Encyclopaedia" were huge at nearly 100 pages each, the section on Cambodia and Laos was too slender. Dismissed too were the magazines I'd brought back from Cambodia, just in case, for a future school assignment. And there aren't too many Cambodian foodie blogs, other than Phenonmenon. The Cambodian section of my Asian clippings folder consisted of just 2 dishes : Beef Salad and Nhoam Moan Chicken Salad. Nothing at Taste.com either. So past all of these, and to the Net to find something suitable : settling on "Saik Chrouk Ch'ranouitk" aka Khmer Coconut Pork Skewers.

Kat was adventurous even then, in her approach to cooking and she's fiercely independent. Nevertheless I was called on periodically and a whole lot of knowledge sharing took place in our tiny kitchen that night eg how to timetable, adapting from grilling to stir fry-simmer etc.

All served on the requisite bed of noodles & finished with coriander leaves. It looked and tasted great - although be warned - it's heavy on garlic !

Kat learnt some Asian cuisine from me & I learnt from her, that we can't dictate to Gen Y how & what resources should be used, plus it's okay to innovate beyond prescriptive guidelines, if that makes sense. That applies inside and outside the kitchen. 

A metaphor for knowledge sharing, experimenting & innovation between the generations ?

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Global Wanderings in My Kitchen Learning Lab

The brother-in-law, @llocklee, refers to me as the Librarian - and I guess I do like to collect / organise information for fast finding & later re-use. That includes my foodie interests. The books are all catalogued in LibraryThing and the cuttings piled, then filed in bulging folders.

It's something I inherited from my mother - she tells me that she was forced to give up Asian food when pregnant with me - but ever afterward she has enjoyed experimenting. I remember her favourites seemed to be the 1960's Flemings supermarket magazines & the 1950's Aerophos cookbook (both of these early Australian foodie ref's were surprisingly international in coverage compared with the Commonsense Cookery Book & can still be picked up on Ebay from time to time). She also did traditional Aussie style including a mean Devilled Sausages, that I'd almost forgotten until I came across the remarkably similar 'Mrs Adams's Savoury Sausages' in Kylie Kwong's "Recipes & Stories" (p 40). Coincidentally amazing is that Mum is a Mrs Adams too.

I can't say that Mum specifically taught me how to cook, rather, I absorbed from her the enjoyment of  experimenting with new ideas. Now in her 70's, she's still experimenting with newly discovered surprises, brought over for our regular Sunday night family dinners. I do the mains & Mum does the desserts plus "sweet treats" for the week, for my teen, Kat.

And of course Mum also has numerous cookbooks, folders & cuttings stashed around her home. I sometimes say that Mum was born before her time - with the now exploding global foodie scene. Last weekend we took her to the Mecca Bah in Canberra after the twilight viewing of the Masterpieces from Paris Exhibition at the NGA. Tonight it's Nam's Vietnamese in Wollongong (one of the many Vietnamese), after the Wharf Theatre Revue's "Pennies from Kevin".

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A few of my favourite foodie websites :

• Mag & Newspaper foodie sites 
  • Taste.com - drawn from a number of Australian foodie Mags - even has my Masaman Chicken Pide - hot & spicy !
  • AWW Food / Cuisine.com.au / HomeLife / Australian Gourmet Traveller
  • BHG Oz / BHG USA
• TV foodie sites
  • ABC - Poh's Kitchen -  Secret Recipes - Surfing the Menu 
  • TEN - Ready Steady Cook 
  • LifeStyle Channel
  • SBS - Food
• Eating Out in Wollongong  - The Eating Out Map - Thirroul Seaside Art Festival (always yummy food) - (more than food ...  What's Up Wollongong / Viva La Gong / Shoalhaven Wine Trail / Southern Highlands Wineries )
• Maggie Beer / Donna Hay / Ben O'Donoghue / Curtis Stone / Elise Pascoe / Mietta's
• All Recipes / Good Recipes / My Recipes  / Recipezaar / WorldWide Gourmet / Korean Kitchen / Sydney Markets
• Cupcakes - AWW Food /Taste.com / All Recipes  / Recipezaar / Cupcakes.com / WhiteWings / Family Circle (USA)
• Supermarket foodie sites : Coles on Line / Woolworths / IGA
• Sold in Australia - Food product sites : Ayam / Barilla / Bega Cheese / Betty Crocker / BKK / Cadbury's / Capilano / Chang's / Cheesematters / CSR / Dairy Farmers / Devondale / Fonterra / Goodman Fielder / Gourmet Garden / Greens / Hakubaku Noodles / Keens / Kellogs / Kikkomans /  King Island Dairy /  Kraft / Lee Kum Kee / Market Fresh / Massel / MasterFoods / McCormicks / McKenzies / Nestle / Oriental (Obento) / Pandaroo / Pataks / Pauls / Philadelphia /  Queen Essences / Red Meat - The Main Meal / Riviana / Sanitarium / Sharwoods / Simply Great Meals / SPC Ardmona / Spice Bazaar / Sunbeam / Sunrice / The Butchers Voice / The Malaya / Vegeta / Western Star Butter / Whitewings / Yeo's

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And some of my favourite foodie blogs (in no particular order ...  )  

• From Australia  
  • Raspberri Cupcakes - so good - I RSS blog posts to Googlereader
  • One Green Acre
  • Australia Entertains
  • Cookbook Maniac
  • No More Cookbooks
  • Kulinarya Cooking Club - Sydney Based Filipino Foodie Bloggers : Kat /  Olive / Caroline / Peach / Cusinera / Asha / Malou / Cherrie / Trisha / Trissa
  • Tummy Rumble aka @Reemski's  I am obsessed with food - check out her bookshelf
  • The Food Zeitgeist - I love their list of Australian foodie blogs
  • Thoughts from Becca - Inside Cuisine
  • The Journal of a Girl Who Loves Food
  • Illawarra Food
  • Jenius
  • Not Quite Nigella
  • Tuscan Blog
  • A Delicious Year
  • 100 Miles of Food in the Hunter Valley
  • Life 's A Feast
  • The Informal Foodie
  • Abstract Gourmet
  • Pilu At Freshwater
  • Exclusively Food
  • At My Table
  • I Eat Therefore I Am
  • Lib.er.tine
  • Limes & Lycopene
  • Souvlaki for the Soul
  • The Food Blog
  • Foodtrail
  • Luke Nguyen's Vietnam & Mouthful from SBS 
  • Vanilla Slice (unrelated - pics from Ouyen's Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph) 
  • The Cookbook

• Beyond Australia  
  • Foodblogs - aggregates heaps of foodie blogs latest updates
  • HomeMades - "across the ditch"  by an Indonesian born Kiwi
  • Gusty Gourmet - another Kiwi foodie blog from "across the ditch"
  • A Slice of Cherry Pie - UK - listed in world's 50 best foodie blogs
  • Mainly Sweet - Delicious Delicious Delicious / DayDreamer Desserts
  • Frances Mayes' Journal / Parla Food - fr another Italian based American
  • Binnurs Turkish Cookbook / Turkish Cuisine
  • Pizza Goon
  • Phnomenon - from Cambodia
  • LaoCook - a Laotian based in Spain
  • Malaysia Best
  • Basta Masarup - from a Filippina in the US (& more from Philippines )
  • East Meets West - Singapore
  • Fuschia Dunlop
  • Greens and Chocolate
  • Food.People.Want
  • She, the Epicurious Girl - from Japan / Shizuoka Gourmet - cycling gourmet from Japan - I also RSS to Google Reader
  • My Korean Kitchen / Korean Food Recipes / Maangchi / Korean Food
  • The Spice Spoon - from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran & beyond
  • And Now for Something Completely Delicious
  • Salt Shaker - from Argentina
  • Refrigerator Soup Dot Com aka life is short - let's eat
  • Sailu's- simple Indian cooking with a focus on Andhra
  • The Wednesday Chef - fr New York - also listed in world's 50 best foodie blogs
  • Crocktease 
  • The Urban Spork
  • Cooking for Engineers - so very very different 

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These lists are eclectic - like my cook book collection at LibraryThing & even more so, my folders.

Serendipity - Storytelling of Wine and War - Le Maitre de Maison de Sa Cave a Sa Table

It was @Reemski who triggered it - not the Wine and War - but finally got me underway to list my family's library collections on LibraryThing. 

 And inevitably revealed, the books that I always meant to read, continually bobbing up and down in the overladen bookcases around our home.

Thus in the early weeks of 2010, and 70 years after the Axis invasion of France, I finally began to read "Wine & War" (E-Reader excerpt) an alternate view of WWII through the eyes of winelovers, Don & Petie Kladstrup. As described by The Wine Doctor, their book is a series of stories of survival under Occupation as told by many of the wine making families of France. It is these stories that predominate over the often awful military details described elsewhere. And also because of these unusual circumstances one man was able to gather the stories of wine and food of regional France.

The story starts in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps and just across the river from Salzburg, where I had first heard of its Eagles Nest during a trip to Austria in late 1981. We had peered up at it - barely visible so high was it - as our Guide told us of its history as Hitler's fortress. Really ...  just an interesting aside from our skiing holiday in the area near St Johann's am Pillersee in the Austrian Alps. WWII seemed so long ago to us back then, in our twenties, and yet in1981 these events at Berchtesgaden had occurred less than 40 years earlier.

The Kladstrups tell of the vast quantities of French Champagne and wine plundered & railed to Berchtesgaden, despite the efforts of many French to secret as much as possible away behind fake walls in their cellars.

In the opening page the Kladstrups describe the uncovering of half a million bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothschild & many other vintages recovered from Berchtesgaden in 1944 by Sergeant Bernard de Nonancourt & others in the French Army. And there were many, many other items stashed there - thus in reading "Wine & War", I began to appreciate Berchtesgaden's significance.

In fact it was the stories in "Wine & War", that made understanding life under the Occupation a closer reality. In movies we often see occcupied Paris, but less of the countryside, such as the Great Wine Regions of France. In "Wine & War" the family stories tell of yet another war after so many ... of taking the longer term view ...  of preserving the family's wine heritage & economy to be ready in the years after the  conflict ended. And also to comprehend the creation of a "borderless" Europe -  what would be later called the European Union - to avoid such wars in the future.

Memorable  stories for me were those of members of French wine families in POW camps - such as Gaston Huet of the Loire who organized the great wine tasting party on January 24 1943, the feast day of St Vincent - patron saint French winemakers - but in the end had to be spread over several days to accommodate 4000 prisoners.The plan was for 700 bottles of wine to "be obtained to enable each prisoner just one glass of wine. The organising committee was composed of representatives from each of France's wine regions "- an indication of the geographic spread of the POW population. Many of the prisoners did not come from wine backgrounds, and so Huet generously shared his knowledge of wine regions, wines & their characteristics, so that the rare experience could fully savoured.

Huet recalled years later "I don't know what we would have done without that party. It gave us something to hold on to. It gave us a reason to get up in the morning to get through each day. Talking about wine and sharing it  made all of us feel closer to home, and more alive."

In fact it was years later when the Kladstrups went to interview Gaston Huet about his opposition to the French Government bringing the TGV railroad through the vineyards, that the whole story of wine in France during the war began to unfold.

Equally evocative - Roger Ribaud also in a POW camp - 'Christmas 1940 "On this Noel of 1940, I have begun to write a little book in an effort to dispel some of the sadness that we are living with and share some of the hopes we cling to in our captivity, of returning to our homes and loved ones and the values we hold most dear" ... Ribaud began to make a list of French wines, every wine he could think of: some he had tasted, others he hoped to taste. He sorted them by region : Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Alsace, the Loire. He classified them according to their finesse, body and bouquet. '

It would become a book entitled Le Maitre de Maison de Sa Cave a Sa Table - The Head of the Household from His Cellar to His Table  - this is a memoir of great food and wine and how they can brought into perfect harmony" - google it and you will still find reference to this great work -with copies sometimes still available.

Writing on whatever scraps of paper he could scavenge made "long cold lonely days seem shorter"... and Ribaud "asked other POW's about their favourite wine and food combinations , what grapes grow best in their regions  and how they prepared certain foods  ... over time he compiled a huge core of information and knowledge, not only about the famous wines but about small country ones barely known outside their villages...... 

"After the war, his book was published to great acclaim and hailed as one of the first books that paid serious attention to regional wines and food .... Roger Ribaud sent a copy to each of his fellow prisoners of war 'I hope this will ease the pain of imprisonment and yet be a souvenir of our friendship and the years we shared together'."

Roger Ribaud stressed that one did not have to be an expert to know about these things, that most of this could be learned by reading, tasting and talking to others ..."

True knowledge sharing ! And in the most unexpected situations ...

 

Italian Roasted Pork Loin with Grapes - Sunday Night Family Dinner

I really loved Australian Table Magazine which morphed into BBC Australian Good Food Mag, which I wasn't so sure about. However tonight I adapted their Roasted Pork Loin with Grapes for my family's Sunday Night Family Dinner (haven't been able to find their magazine site online as yet !).

I deleted the white wine vinegar and replaced it with extra virgin olive oil.

I also added 2 medium potatoes (to serve 4) peeled & cut into segments as well as 4 small onions to the roasting pan an hour before roasting was due to end.

Then I added sliced capsicum (bell peppers) & eggplant (aubergine) cut into 2cm cubes to the roasting pan for last 30 minutes .

Served with sliced steamed Carrots & steamed French Green Beans.

The pork was so very succulently tender & my "70 something" Mum really loved it - especially the red grapes, as she had never had grapes in a mains before - and it's so important to have older folk keep eating & maintain an interest in food!

After dinner my Teen, Kat baked White Chocolate Mud Cake (WhiteWings) & Orange Cake (Greens) - both with Green Coloured Frosting - hmm well I used to do Purple coloured cakes ....

(PS Mum says she's about to experiment with a new Chocolate Cake recipe made with Beetroot pureed in a blender - now I am not so sure about that - however if she's willing to try my experiments then I obviously have to reciprocate !)

(PPS - I may need to buy a few more copies of BBC Australian Good Food Mag in future - features Suzanne Gibbs daughter of iconic veteran Australian foodie Margaret Fulton)

 

Elies se Armi - Greek Pickled Olives from my Thirroul Seaside Garden - Global Wanderings in My Kitchen

I've been to Greece  a few times and just loved the food, Spanokopita. Tiropitakia, Dolmades, Tzatziki, Taramasalata, Souvlaki, Greek Roasted Leg of Lamb, Cheeses (Feta & Haloumi), Saganaki, Garithes me Feta (Garlic Prawns cooked in Tomato & Feta Sauce), Baklava & of course the Olives.

Now our local Thirroul Bowlo Club eatery has turned Greek, run by the husband of one my old school mates, Efti, one of the few Greeks in Thirroul in those days. We'd celebrated our wedding anniversary at their inaugural Greek Bazouki & Belly Dancing Night. It was a great night with Greek dancing, even more so to find that some of our old workmates, who are members of the Illawarra Greek community, as well as being friends of friends of Efti's husband, had wandered up to Thirroul to help kick it off.

So enthused by Greek foods, about 10 years ago, I'd planted an olive tree in the front garden of our seaside home on the NSW South Coast. We have a southerly exposure to salt laden winds so everything takes ages to grow - if they survive at all. The olive tree grew & grew - competing with the banksia's that attract Sulphur Crested Black Cockatoos.

We didn't get any olives for a long, long time. And even if we had, I recalled the label on the little bush I'd bought said something about a caustic soda pickling method - surely there was something less nasty ? But most stories I'd heard mentioned the caustic soda method - really offputting.

Finally, 3 years ago we had lots of olives - not enough to press our own oil - but enough to bottle the olives themselves. By then I'd read a few more of my Greek cookbooks, and discovered caustic soda wasn't necessary at all.

So I used Elies se Armi, aka Pickled Olives, pp18-19 from the AWW Easy Greek Style Cookery book - similar to Tess Mallos's Greek Cookbook p98,Angeline Kapsaskis's Greek Commonsense Cookbook p16 & Bourke's Backyard Factsheet - ( full instruction details here ).

The tedious part is making the 2 lengthwise cuts to the stone in each olive, gloves are recommended if you don't want your hands dyed a burgundy-purplish shade. I mentioned the olive slitting to an ABL (Australian Born Lebanese) work mate and she muttered about her father's bottling of olives - not something she wanted to do again too often. Another Macedonian workmate confirmed that the brine pickling was definitely the way to do olives & mentioned that it is common to not get a good crop every year.

Altogether, it really is too easy - all you need is olives, water, salt and, at the end, olive oil. Change the water every day for 5-10 days, depending on whose recipe you follow, then leave them in the dark. I leave them for months, rather than opening after 5 weeks as some recipes indicate. Contributions to the Manisa Turkish website tend to agree - some suggesting keeping them in the dark for 6 months before opening.

My husband's bottled olives from last year's crop were checked by our nephew James, the Apprentice Chef, & he was very impressed that we bottled our own. James liked their flavour too. We'd emailed a copy of the technique to cousins down on their farm in Oaklands, near Corowa in southern NSW. Ann had been a high school cooking teacher, but had left to manage the farm finances. She is deadly with removing avocado stones with quick knife stab - but hadn't worked out how to pickle the many olives growing on their trees in the Home Paddock kitchen garden. But she was very keen to try it out.

So we're finding that we get reasonable crop every second year - depending on how many we lose to storms and alas, the sulphur crested black cockatoos & galahs who seemed to have enjoyed this year's crop. 

 

Postscript for @misssafet

Psari Lemonato from Tess Mallos Greek Cookbook - which I believe is out of print - possibly in her Complete Middle East Cookbook - recently reprinted

• 1 whole fish for baking (1kg)
• juice of 2 lemons
• salt& pepper
• 500gm potatoes very thinly sliced
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1/2 cup olive oil

1. Clean fish & slash each side in 2 or 3 places
2. Sprinkle inside & out with some of lemon juice & season with salt & pepper
3. Place in oiled baking dish
4. Arrange sliced potatoes around fish & pour remaining lemon juice over potatoes & fish
5. Season potatoes with salt & pepper - pour olive oil over contents of dish
6. Sprinkle with oregano then cover with foil
7. Cook at 180-190oC for 40 minutes (check after 30 minutes)
8. Remove foil & continue to cook for another 30 minutes or until fish & potatoes are cooked
9. Serve immediately with steamed spinach, green salad and/or Greek salad

Serves 4-5

Pics :

1.Waterfront in Mykonos  2. & 3. : Santorini  4.& 5. Mykonos Restaurant with young Olive Trees on tables 6. & 7. My Olive Tree 8. Pickled Olives from our Tree

 

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Why we need to record - Mrs Joan Adams's Devilled Sausages - a childhood memory inspired by Kylie Kwong

Sunday night - for the last 15 years it has been an Aussie family get together night - I cook Mains and my Mum does the Desserts. And so my 16 year old, Kat, has experienced some very traditional Desserts as well as her Nan's latest experiments ....

Joyously, Kat is now emerging as a Foodie in her own right .... Japanese is her specialty, along with Cambodian dishes, Profiteroles & White Chocolate Mud Cakes... 

Tonight it was another of our traditional Aussie Sunday nights - a sort of comfort food theme - a left over night from Kat's 16th Birthday Party (a Disney Princess Party - and that's another story ... ).

We had heaps of leftover sausages (uncooked) & cubed cheese from Kat's birthday party. David had done his always absolutely superb Indonesian Chicken Sate in Peanut Sauce to complement my Delicious Fried Rice (another Kylie Kwong gem featured in Delicious Magazine a few years back) - hardly surprising that sausages were not going to be much in demand at the birthday party!

So for our Sunday night dinner I decided to cook the leftover snags using my Mum's Devilled Sausages recipe - partly from my childhood memory and part from Kylie Kwong's "Recipes and Stories" p 40-41 : "Mrs Adams's Savoury Sausages & Mashed Potatoes". Coincidentally my Mum is another Mrs Adams!

(And on this occasion I supplied the Dessert - more leftovers : Aussie Kids Party fav : "Frogs in the Pond" aka Chocolate Freddo Frogs in Green Lime Jelly (Jello). )

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I had previously scoured Mum's decades old recipe clippings, but had not located her "Devilled Sausages" recipe, and so I was hoping that when Mum tasted my improvisation, that she might be able to shed some light on any specific ingredients that I had missed.

Over dinner, Mum admitted that she certainly recalled the dish, and thought my improvisation was fairly close - but sadly explained that although she had been searching her recipe clippings collection, so far she had not found her original recipe.

How many family treasures could that scenario apply to ?

So important to document them isn't it ?

Otherwise lost forever...Records matter ... otherwise knowledge sharing can be limited

PS ...

Sausages are fairly basic, traditional family fare - although it is easy to pimp them with trimmings. 

One of my fav memories is the trimmings used by my friend & caterer, Irene Tognetti, and also mother of one of Australian's Living Treasures : Australian Chamber Orchestra's Richard Tognetti.

It was local government election time, where Irene was doing the catering for 100+ folk at a Trivia Night fundraiser. Although I was fairly distracted being both a candidate & the campaign director, I was still so impressed with how Irene transformed what could have been just another mundane sausage sizzle.

How ? So easy really - with generous sprays of Rosemary on the platters of sausages for each table - so simple and so effective.

KerrieAnne's Devilled Sausages Recipe

- 10 sausages (ours come from our local Harvey's Gourmet Butchers in the NSW South Coast seaside village of Thirroul - their meat is so absolutely superb! )
- 1/2 cup cheddar cheese (sliced or grated or finely chopped - I used finely chopped from the excess I had prepared for the birthday party)
- Worcestershire Sauce (I use Lea & Perrins which is quite runny and not as thick as some brands)
- 4-6 Basil leaves (I used fresh from our Vege Patch - David is amazed how big the Basil leaves are this year - with all the warmth, rain & humidity ! )

Sauce
- 1/3 cup tomato sauce
- 1/4 cup brown vinegar
- 3 tbspns brown sugar
- 2 tspsns Keens Mustard Powder

1. Preheat oven to 190oC
2. Grease rectangular baking dish
3. Combine sauce ingredients
4. Slit sausages lengthwise - but do not cut all the way through - then place them in baking dish
5. Spoon mixed sauce ingredients into slits in sausages
6. Arrange cheese (slices - grated or finely chopped) over the sauce filled slits in sausages
7. Sprinkle Worcestershire Sauce over the cheese - but do not be heavy handed
8. Bake in oven for approximately 25 minutes
9. Remove from oven - lift with egg slice or BarbieMate tool.

To serve :  Garnish with fresh Basil leaves & serve with potato mash & steamed vegetables 

(Note

- Kylie Kwong's "Recipes & Stories" p 40-41 version has a Bacon slice placed over the sauce on each sausage, before the cheese is added - and did not have the Worcestershire Sauce sprinkling

- my Mum doesn't recall using Bacon in her version but reckons it would work quite well
- also, neither Kylie Kwong's nor my Mum's had the Basil leaves)

Wanderings from Beijing Hot Pots to Asian Dumpling Steamboat in My Thirroul Kitchen

Our family loves Asian Hotpots, Dumpling Soups & Steamboats - whether served in a specialist restaurant in Beijing or cooked at the table of our Thirroul seaside home.

When we travelled in China it was towards the end of Winter and we discovered they eat a lot dumplings in the north in the colder months, ie not just a rice based diet.

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A favourite memory was definitely a Hot Pot Restaurant in Beijing where you select all your ingredients - meats, vegetables, sauces, noodles, dumplings and then steam at your table - see Pics 2 & 3. We've tried to recreate it back home in Australia for our Sunday night family dinners with Nan, who has always been adventurous with Asian foods.

Sometimes we've cooked Hot Pot at the table using our Swiss Fondue Pots - other times we've pre-steamed in a stainless stockpot on the cooktop & then transferred to the table. I generally like to use lots of Asian Greens, fresh prawns & sliced chicken with dumplings in a giant stockpot - especially in the cooler months. So plenty of leftovers later on for busy weeknights after soccer training etc.

I've been inspired by Steamboats in Charmaine Solomon's encyclopaedic "Complete Asian Cookbook" & Kylie Kwong's nostalgic "Recipes & Stories" (p 106-113) as well as "Heart and Soul" (p 180-183). Not to mention Tobie Puttock's Beijing theme in the July 2008 issue of Oz Delicious Magazine (p75) - see also his Lifestyle Channel show. Interesting as Tobie Puttock is better known for Italian cooking, and not Asian cuisine.

I experimented with Kylie Kwong's Steamboat from ABC, as well as Taste.com.au, Ho Mai's & Australian Better Homes & Gardens suggestions....

in the end I developed my own Steamboat Stock

2 litres chicken stock
1 shallot sliced finely
1 tablespoon finely sliced lemon grass
2 teaspoons fresh ginger (crushed)
2 teaspoons garlic (crushed)
4 dried Chinese Mushrooms
shake of salt
6 Szechuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon Soy Sauce - more if you prefer
1 tablespoon Mirin
1 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice Powder
1/2 teaspoon Sesame Oil
1 to 2 teaspoons Maggi Seasoning - Kylie Kwong's "magic ingredient in her Delicious Fried Rice"

Add all of the above to large stockpot & heat till boiling

Add your choice of sliced vegetables - fresh - nb canned Chinese Vegetables will help in emergencies with unexpected visitors
fresh prawns - peeled, deveined and chopped into 2 to 3 pieces
thinly sliced chicken breast or beef fillet steak
dim sum / dumplings - again frozen varieties from specialist Asian Grocery Shops will help in emergencies with unexpected visitors
noodles

nb after cooking as above - remove the Chinese Dried Mushrooms from the stockpot and slice before returning to stockpot

Do not overcook - especially the veges and prawns

Usually we serve from the stainless stockpot at table & ladle into Chinese Rice/Noodle Bowls

When reheating for midweek meals - I ladle into a pot on the stove top & add sliced fresh bok choy and sometimes additional fresh prawns before heating gently until hot but not "stewed".

Too easy after a busy day followed by soccer, Girl Guides (Scouts) !